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“The girl that was here?” I nodded with a smile.

“August, we can’t let her take the fall.”

“We won’t.” He reached for my mother’s hand. It was as though he couldn’t stop touching her. The only time he moved away enough that he couldn’t touch her was when he came to me. “I’ll tell Reaper I did it.”

“Indie won’t let you take credit for her kill.” Jack laughed.

“She’s a child, Jack.”

“She may be a child, Bane, but trust me, she’d go up against Reaper,” King said. He looked at me, and with barelya movement, he shook his head. He didn’t want me to tell my parents about Indie.

My parents.

I had parents. A mom and a dad.

“Oh my God!” I cried.

“What is it, honey?” The panic on my mother’s face broke my heart. But I’d just realized something.

“I have a sister.” I smiled at Bane. “Before she left, Amber called me her little sister.” I bit my lip, trying not to cry again. “I really am her little sister.”

“Yes.” Bane smiled back. “And you have another brother as well.”

I had a family. A real family.

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Mimic

The morning light filtered through the room, creating a beam of light that focused on the Bible lying on the nightstand like a spotlight. One of the books George filled my room with was a Bible. He probably didn’t think I’d read it. But I did. Cover to cover.

It was bullshit.

There was one particular verse that came to mind as the dust in the room danced in the ray of sunshine that peeked between where the curtains didn’t quite meet.

Psalm 30:5 Weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning.

There was no fucking joy. A new day meant new shit piled on top of the shit from yesterday. My mother was alive. She was at the clubhouse waiting for me to come home.

I knew she wouldn’t leave. Indie was right about one thing: my mother wouldn’t give up until I talked to her. She’d always been that way. Whenever I got mad at her or Rose, she made me talk it out. She wouldn’t let me stay angry.

I didn’t want to hear her bullshit excuses. I didn’t want to forgive her. Forgiving her meant no longer blaming her. I knew she wasn’t to blame. Somewhere deep inside me, I knew everything Dakota said was a lie. But if I admitted that out loud, it meant I had to admit that I’d let myself believe it because I needed to blame her.

I couldn’t live with the guilt that I’d allowed myself to be convinced she was evil. That I wasn’t strong enough to have faith in her. I loved my mother, and I’d let her down. That was the real crux of the problem.

It wasn’t that I couldn’t forgive her.

It was that I didn’t believe she would forgive me.

And I didn’t believe that because I couldn’t forgive myself.

I’d been weak.

I’d given in to save myself the pain.

Physical pain and emotional pain. Dakota was a master at delivering both. I’d had him in my sights yesterday, but my focus had been on Rose.

When I walked into that warehouse and saw him holding a gun to my sister’s head, nothing else mattered but her. I would have done anything he’d asked me to do as long as he didn’t hurt her.